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Gimme shelter: Flat Rock residents endorse park pavilion

FLAT ROCK — A high school special education teacher, a middle school phys-ed teacher and a Flat Rock Planning Board member last week urged the Village Council to add a pavilion at the Park at Flat Rock.

James Reed, who teaches special-needs children at East Henderson High School, brought some of his students to emphasize the point of how much a pavilion could help various community groups.
Reed and his class currently work once a week at the park spreading mulch, pulling weeds and performing other grounds keeping duties. The students also spend about an hour a week walking the trails at the park and learning outside of the classroom.
"Our kids need an opportunity to get off campus," Reed said. "We need a time to go out into the community... To make [the students] full-fledged members of our society I feel it's important to get these guys off the campus and out into the community where the rest of the world operates."
Adding a pavilion to the park would be the perfect spot for Reed to hold lessons, enjoy a picnic or just to rest, he said.
"The concept of a pavilion reaches so many of my already established visions, goals," Reed said. "And I think it does for [council] as well... I think your vision for the park is also our vision for the park."
Flat Rock Middle School P.E. teacher Kayla Lindsey said a pavilion would be useful for the school's cross-country team, which practices at the park. Flat Rock Middle hosted a countywide meet there on Sept. 16.
The biggest advantage the pavilion will bring her students is safety from severe weather, Lindsey said.
"The pavilion would be a great asset to us for the simple fact that if you've ever been outside in August and September around 3 o'clock it rains," she said. "When my kids are running and it starts storming I don't have a big place to put them."
During the meet on Sept. 16 a thunderstorm left multiple cross-country teams from across the county to find shelter at the park. Some teams went under the awning at the old clubhouse, others went to their buses and a few teams left because of the weather conditions and lack of proper shelter.
"Having a space to put (the students) where we can do stretches, we can do calisthenics, where we can do whatever we need to do but to keep them safe as well," Lindsey said. "To have a facility where they can go, where we can meet and where they're safe when those 3 o'clock storms happen ... would be awesome."
Wendy Beville, a member of the Flat Rock Planning Board and of the Land of Sky Garden Club, also expressed interest in using the pavilion for monthly garden club meetings.
The Flat Rock Village Council voted on Oct. 9 to endorse construction of a park pavilion and committed to funding the project in the budget year that begins on July 1, 2015.